I didn’t use to believe that multitasking was a waste of time. I prided myself on being an amazing multitasker, able to juggle many things at once and hold multiple thoughts in my head while performing different actions. I thought I saved time. What was hard to admit was most times I ended up revisiting many of the tasks I was doing to finish them or fix them because I wasn’t fully completing any task.
In my research journey on work life balance I have found countless studies that prove multitasking is another way of saying “divided attention” and is a waste of time. There is something to be said for what I call level one multitasking which is more around the flow or organizing your day or your process in an effective manner. Like starting the laundry before you cook dinner or printing a long document out while you go grab a cup of coffee. A new study in Journal of Science reports that the brain actually “splits” in half to multitask and to do anything more than two things at once can result in irrational decisions because they are only being made with half of the brain.
I don’t know about you, for me I prefer to use my whole brain when making decisions. This article is a good reminder to stop and think even more when I’m tempted to divide my attention and do more than two things at a time.
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